Posted in Uncategorized
Release yesterday from the Michigan Innocence Clinic:
The Michigan Innocence Clinic is very pleased to announce that our client Victor Caminata was exonerated today at the Wexford County Courthouse in Cadillac, Michigan. Mr. Caminata had served 5 years and 2 weeks of wrongful imprisonment for arson before he was released on July 2, 2013, when the Michigan Attorney General’s Office agreed that his conviction should be vacated because its experts no longer stood by the arson determination that had sent Mr. Caminata to prison to serve 9 to 40 years. Today, the AG dismissed the case with prejudice.
Mr. Caminata was convicted after the house he shared with his then-girlfriend and their children burned in 2008. An initial fire investigation concluded that the fire originated in the chimney, which was connected to a wood stove. But after the police received an anonymous tip, investigators re-examined the wreckage and found supposed signs that the fire had been intentionally set to look like a chimney fire. Remarkably, the state’s investigators never examined the interior of the chimney, which is the most basic step a fire investigator is required to take before ruling out a chimney fire.
Today’s final dismissal came almost two years after we filed a motion for relief from judgment for Mr. Caminata based on the conclusion of our experts that the state’s fire investigators had committed fundamental errors in violation of NFPA 921, that the supposed signs of arson were spurious, and that the original determination that an accidental chimney fire had burned the house was, in fact, correct.
We are especially grateful to Jim Samuels of Big Rapids, Michigan, and Mike McKenzie of Atlanta, Georgia, both of whom co-counseled the case with the Clinic on a pro bono basis, and to experts Joe Filas and Tom May, who also lent their services pro bono. Staff attorney Imran Syed led our legal team, which included at various times former co-director (now Michigan Supreme Court justice) Bridget McCormack, clinical professor Kim Thomas, and former students Blase Schmid, Adam Thompson, Kate O’Connor, Rachel Burg, Zach Dembo, Nick Hambley, Laura Andrade, Jocelin Chang, and Marc Allen, and current students Lexi Bond, Emily Goebel, and Claire Madill.
Posted in Exonerations, Forensic controls, Junk science
From the Northern California Innocence Project:
The Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP), acting as amicus, assisted veteran appellate and postconviction attorney Marc Zilversmit in reversing the conviction of Jamal Trulove, wrongfully convicted of murder after a single eyewitness implicated him in a killing San Francisco. Zilversmit is a long-time supporter of NCIP and it was a pleasure to be able to assist him in attaining justice for Mr. Trulove.
Press release:U.S. DEPARTMENTS OF JUSTICE AND COMMERCE NAME EXPERTSTO FIRST-EVER NATIONAL COMMISSION ON FORENSIC SCIENCEWASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced appointments to a newly created National Commission on Forensic Science.Members of the commission will work to improve the practice of forensic science by developing guidance concerning the intersections between forensic science and the criminal justice system. The commission also will work to develop policy recommendations for the U.S. Attorney General, including uniform codes for professional responsibility and requirements for formal training and certification.The commission is co-chaired by Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole and Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Patrick D. Gallagher. Nelson Santos, deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Forensic Sciences at the Drug Enforcement Administration, and John M. Butler, special assistant to the NIST director for forensic science, serve as vice-chairs.“I appreciate the commitment each of the commissioners has made and look forward to working with them to strengthen the validity and reliability of the forensic sciences and enhance quality assurance and quality control,” said Deputy Attorney General Cole. “Scientifically valid and accurate forensic analysis supports all aspects of our justice system.”The commission includes federal, state and local forensic science service providers; research scientists and academics; law enforcement officials; prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges; and other stakeholders from across the country. This breadth of experience and expertise reflects the many different entities that contribute to forensic science practice in the U.S. and will ensure these broad perspectives are represented on the commission and in its work.“This new commission represents an extremely broad range of expertise and skills,” said Under Secretary Gallagher. “It will help ensure that forensic science is supported by the strongest possible science-based evidence gathering, analysis and measurement.“This latest and most impressive collaboration between the Department of Justice and the National Institute of Standards and Technology will help ensure that the forensic sciences are supported by the most rigorous standards available—a foundational requirement in a nation built on the credo of ‘justice for all,’” said John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.The following commissioners were chosen from a pool of more than 300 candidates:Suzanne Bell, Ph.D., Associate Professor, West Virginia University; Frederick Bieber, Ph.D., Medical Geneticist, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School; Thomas Cech, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder; Cecelia Crouse, Ph.D., Director, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Crime Laboratory;Gregory Czarnopys, Deputy Assistant Director, Forensic Services, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; M. Bonner Denton, Ph.D., Professor, University of Arizona; Vincent Di Maio, M.D., Consultant in Forensic Pathology; Troy Duster, Ph.D., Chancellor’s Professor and Senior Fellow, Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy, University of California, Berkeley; Jules Epstein, Associate Professor of Law, Widener University; Stephen Fienberg, Ph.D., Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics and Social Science, Carnegie Mellon University; Andrea Ferreira-Gonzalez, Ph.D., Professor of Pathology and Director Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, Virginia Commonwealth University; John Fudenberg, Assistant Coroner, Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner, Clark County, Nevada; S. James Gates, Jr., Ph.D., University System Regents Professor and John S. Toll Professor of Physics, University of Maryland; Dean Gialamas,Crime Laboratory Director, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Scientific Services Bureau;Paul Giannelli, Distinguished University Professor and Albert J Weatherhead III and Richard W. Weatherhead Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University; Hon. Barbara Hervey, Judge, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals; Susan Howley, Public Policy Director, National Center for Victims of Crime; Ted Hunt, Chief Trial Attorney, Jackson County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Kansas City, Missouri; Linda Jackson, Director, Virginia Department of Forensic Science; John Kacavas, United States Attorney, District of New Hampshire; Pamela King, Assistant State Public Defender, Minnesota State Public Defender Office; Marc LeBeau, Ph.D., Senior Forensic Scientist, Scientific Analysis Section, Federal Bureau of Investigation; Julia Leighton, General Counsel, Public Defender Service, District of Columbia; Hon. Bridget Mary McCormack, Justice, Michigan Supreme Court; Peter Neufeld, Co-Director, Innocence Project, Benjamin Cardozo School of Law; Phil Pulaski, Chief of Detectives, New YorkCity Police Department; Hon. Jed Rakoff, Senior United States District Judge, Southern District of New York; Matthew Redle,Sheridan County and Prosecuting Attorney, Sheridan, Wyoming; Michael “Jeff” Salyards, Ph.D.,Executive Director, Defense Forensic Science Center, Department of the Army; and Ryant Washington, Sheriff, Fluvanna County Sherriff’s Office, Fluvanna, Virginia.Ex-Officio Members:David Honey, Ph.D., Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Science and Technology and Director of Science and Technology, Office of the Director of National Intelligence;Marilyn Huestis, Ph.D., Chief, Chemistry and Drug Metabolism Section, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health; Gerald LaPorte, Acting Director, Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences, National Institute of Justice; Patricia Manzolillo, Laboratory Director, Forensic Laboratory Services, U.S. Postal Inspection Service; Frances Schrotter, Senior Vice President and Chief Operation Officer, American National Standards Institute; Kathryn Turman,Program Director, Office for Victim Assistance, Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Mark Weiss, Ph.D., Division Director, Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, National Science Foundation.The first meeting of the Commission will be held February 3-4, 2014, at 810 7th Street, N.W., Washington, DC. The membership list, notice of meetings, commission charter and other related material will be maintained within the General Service Administration’s Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) database at http://www.facadatabase.gov.As a non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, NIST promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life. To learn more about NIST, visit www.nist.gov.###14-029DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS, PLEASE USE THE CONTACTS IN THE MESSAGE OR CALL THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AT 202-514-2007.
Posted in Forensic controls, Junk science
The first Illinois exoneree of 2014. Story here.
Posted in Uncategorized
A group of scholars, including Jon Gould, Julia Carrano, Richard Leo and Katie Hall-Jares have posted an interesting article, Predicting Erroneous Convictions, on SSRN. The article is forthcoming at the Iowa Law Review. Download here. The abstract states:
The last thirty years have seen an enormous increase not only in the exonerations of innocent defendants but also academic scholarship on erroneous convictions. This literature has identified a number of common factors that appear frequently in erroneous conviction cases, including forensic error, prosecutorial misconduct, false confessions, and eyewitness misidentification. However, without a comparison or control group of cases, researchers risk labeling these factors as “causes” of erroneous convictions when they may be merely correlates. This article reports results from the first large scale empirical research project to compare wrongful convictions with other innocence cases in which the defendant escaped conviction (so-called “near misses”). Employing statistical methods and an expert panel, the research helps us to understand how the criminal justice system identifies innocent defendants in order to prevent erroneous convictions. In another first, the research secured the cooperation of practitioners from multiple sides of the criminal justice system, including the national Innocence Project, the Police Foundation, the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, and the National District Attorneys Association. The results highlight ten factors that distinguish wrongful convictions from near misses, but the larger story is one of system failure in which the protections of the criminal justice system operate in a counterintuitive manner. The article closes with a series of policy reforms to address these failings.
From the NYTmes:
Editorial Board…
In the justice system, prosecutors have the power to decide what criminal charges to bring, and since 97 percent of cases are resolved without a trial, those decisions are almost always the most important factor in the outcome. That is why it is so important for prosecutors to play fair, not just to win. This obligation is embodied in the Supreme Court’s 1963 holding in Brady v. Maryland, which required prosecutors to provide the defense with any exculpatory evidence that could materially affect a verdict or sentence.
Yet far too often, state and federal prosecutors fail to fulfill that constitutional duty, and far too rarely do courts hold them accountable. Last month, Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, issued the most stinging indictment of this systemic failure in recent memory. “There is an epidemic of Brady violations abroad in the land,” Judge Kozinski wrote in dissent from a ruling against a man who argued that prosecutors had withheld crucial evidence in his case. “Only judges can put a stop to it.”
The defendant, Kenneth Olsen, was convicted of producing ricin, a toxic poison, for use as a weapon. Federal prosecutors knew — but did not tell his lawyers or the court — that an investigation of the government’s forensic scientist, whose lab tests were critical to the case, had revealed multiple instances of sloppy work that had led to wrongful convictions in earlier cases. A state court found the scientist was “incompetent and committed gross misconduct.”
Yet the majority of the federal appeals court panel ruled that the overall evidence of Mr. Olsen’s guilt — including websites he visited and books he bought — was so overwhelming that the failure to disclose the scientist’s firing would not have changed the outcome.
This is the all-too-common response by courts confronted with Brady violations. Judge Kozinski was right to castigate the majority for letting the prosecution refuse to turn over evidence “so long as it’s possible the defendant would’ve been convicted anyway,” as the judge wrote. This creates a “serious moral hazard,” he added, particularly since prosecutors are virtually never punished for misconduct. According to the Center for Prosecutor Integrity, multiple studies over the past 50 years show that courts punished prosecutorial misconduct in less than 2 percent of cases where it occurred. And that rarely amounted to more than a slap on the wrist, such as making the prosecutor pay for the cost of the disciplinary hearing.
Brady violations are, by their nature, hard to detect, but Judge Kozinski had no trouble coming up with more than two dozen examples from federal and state courts just in the last few years, and those are surely the tip of the iceberg. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 43 percent of wrongful convictions are the result of official misconduct.
The Brady problem is in many ways structural. Prosecutors have the task of deciding when a piece of evidence would be helpful to the defense. But since it is their job to believe in the defendant’s guilt, they have little incentive to turn over, say, a single piece of exculpatory evidence when they are sitting on what they see as a mountain of evidence proving guilt. The lack of professional consequences for failing to disclose exculpatory evidence only makes the breach of duty more likely. As Judge Kozinski wrote, “Some prosecutors don’t care about Brady because courts don’t make them care.”
Courts should heed Judge Kozinski’s call, but it will take more than judges to fix the problem. Prosecutors’ offices should adopt a standard “open file” policy, which would involve turning over all exculpatory evidence as a rule, thus reducing the potential for error.
Fighting prosecutorial misconduct is not only about protecting the innocent. It is, as Judge Kozinski wrote, about preserving “the public’s trust in our justice system,” and the foundation of the rule of law.
Download here….
Network press release:
A report released today by the Innocence Networkreveals that 29 people in the US and 2 people in the Netherlands were exonerated for crimes they didn’t commit by Innocence Network members in the past year. This is the largest number of exonerations that the Network has secured in the five years that it has reported its exonerations.
The report, “Innocence Network Exonerations 2013,” details each of this year’s exonerations. DNA contributed to the exonerations of 14 people. The other 17 were exonerated by other means. The 31 people exonerated served a combined 451 years behind bars (and an average of 14.5 years each). Two men served more than 3 decades. Three women were exonerated this year, also a record for the Network.
“Although it is painful to read about these tragic injustices, this year’s report does signal that the innocence movement that began two decades ago is gradually making progress in improving the system,” said Keith Findley, President of the Innocence Network and Co-Director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project. “There were two people who were exonerated by new laws that were passed to make it easier to overturn wrongful convictions. We also saw how new technology is helping to correct injustice.”
Debra Brown of Utah, who served 17 years for a murder she didn’t commit, was the first person to be exonerated through a 2008 law passed by the Utah Legislature that makes it easier to overturn a conviction where there is no DNA evidence. Andrew Johnson, who wrongly served 23 years for rape, was the first person in Wyoming to be exonerated based on post-conviction DNA testing that was possible because of a law that the state passed in 2008. With the passage of a law in Oklahoma in May, all 50 states now have laws that guarantee access to DNA testing to overturn wrongful convictions.
The Knoops Innocence Project in the Netherlands saw its first exonerations this year. Nozai Thomas and Andy Melaan, who were convicted of murder and served 5 and 8 years respectively, were exonerated based on the testimony of a digital forensics expert who produced evidence that Thomas was at his desk downloading music at the time of the murder and that Meelan had used his cell phone on the other side of the island when the crime occurred.
“The report also serves as a stark reminder of the flaws that plague the system,” added Findley. “Misidentification continues to be the leading contributor to wrongful convictions, followed closely by false confessions and bad forensic practices. But this year we also saw numerous instances of police and prosecutorial misconduct and the tragic results of relying on incentivized informants.”
In addition to helping overturn wrongful convictions, Innocence Network organizations worked to bring substantive reform to the criminal justice system. Last year, Network member organizations lobbied statehouse across the country for reforms to improve identification procedures, reduce false confessions and compensate the wrongly convicted.
The Innocence Network is composed of 63 member organizations— 52 members in the US and 11 members in other countries. Each organization operates independently but they coordinate to share information and expertise.
Innocence Network members range from successful clinics that have operated for many years at some of the most respected universities to full-fledged nonprofit organizations with a solid staff and base of funding to small clinics at law schools that are still setting up a process to review cases. You can learn more about the Innocence Network or find an organization near you at www.innocencenetwork.org.
Posted in Exonerations
In Wisconsin, the governor says he’ll issue no “innocence pardons” because it is too hard to pick and choose who deserves attention and who doesn’tFrom the Local:
It is probably Sweden’s worst miscarriage of justice. On Monday, officials decided that Thomas Quick will continue to receive mental treatment but with less restrictions. The Local contributor David Lindén explains how a self-confessed serial killer went on to be cleared of all eight murders.
The National Board of Forensic Medicine (Rättsmedicinalverket) has decided that Quick, who has reverted to his original name Sture Bergwall, will keep receiving treatment but not in a mental hospital. But in order to understand why he ended up standing trial for eight murders that he later said he did not commit, we need a short recap.
From 1992, the already incarcerated Bergwall began to confess to a series of unsolved murders that he, after being in therapy at Säter Mental Hospital – part of Sweden’s correctional services – remembered committing. At the time, he was taking plenty of benzodiazepines, a strong form of psychoactive drugs, to which he said he became addicted. He realized that he would get his hands on more of the drug if he confessed to further atrocities during the therapy sessions. Not all the cases were “strong” enough to go to trial. There was a score of confessions, but some would never make it to the courtroom. Bergwall, who had adopted the name Thomas Quick – a combination of Thomas Blomgren whom he “killed” in 1964 and the maiden name of his mother – was in the end convicted of eight murders.
One detail apparently failed to be examined. Bergwall could not have killed Blomgren. Bergwall was attending his Christian confirmation at the time of Blomgren’s murder. This fact, in combination with Bergwall’s drug abuse, could have illuminated the weakness of the entire case. But it would land on Bergwall’s shoulders to clear his name, not on the justice system’s.
After he quit his medication, Bergwall withdrew all his confessions. Swedish prosecutors cannot prosecute without enough evidence to reasonably secure a verdict. Without the confessions, the cases crumbled and the charges were withdrawn. This summer, prosecutors dropped the eighth and final murder charge. Bergwall has since been fighting to get a new assessment of his mental state, and said he hopes to walk free. The saga took one of its last twists this week, as the Forensic Medicine Board allowed him to receive therapy in a more open form.
For an outsider, it can seem rather strange that a junkie addicted to pills could be convicted of eight murders with the help of “hidden memories,” only accessible by therapy. There was no shortage of critics during the time the confessions played out either. Retired criminology professor, TV personality, and Sweden’s in-house crime sage Leif G.W. Persson bluntly questioned Bergwall’s supposed modus operandi, saying it would be impossible for one man “to go around like a bloody slaughter machine all over Scandinavia.”
Another critic was psychologist Ulf Åsgård, who had helped the Swedish police catch a real serial killer – “Laser Man” John Ausonius who terrorized Stockholm in 1991-1992 by shooting foreign-born Swedes with a laser-sight rifle.
Yet Persson and Åsgård were ignored.
So how could the Sture Bergwall/Thomas Quick scandal happen?
Let us speculate that there was something in the air in Sweden that made society ready for such a grizzly tale. The shelves of book stores were being filled with foreign gore (this was before the proper birth of the domestic Nordic Noir genre) – Brett Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho, with its yuppie freak Patrick Bateman, had recently been translated to Swedish (Bergwall would later cite American Psycho as “inspiration”). Cinema-goers, meanwhile, were gripping their velvet-clad seats as Jodi Foster and Anthony Hopkins faced off in Silence of the Lambs. Reality offered its ready examples too. In 1994, British police arrested serial killer couple Fred and Rosemary West – a case widely reported on in Swedish media.
Put simply, Sweden in the early 1990s was ready for a serial killer of its own. In Thomas Quick, there was enough material to fill several horror novels: childhood abuse, necrophilia, and cannibalism. The media lapped it up.
The Swedes were also rather blue at the time – suffering a financial crisis that was considerably worse than the one that would come in 2008. So in that sense, a “real” serial killer provided a form of psychological relief, and excitement. I would argue that the Swedes were almost envious of other countries’ psychos, and wanted their own.
You cannot, however, use culture and sentiment as an excuse for what happened. What was unfurling would become one of the worst legal scandals in Swedish history. Police officers, therapists, and lawyers misinterpreted, ignored and cheated their way through the evidence-gathering, blatantly putting aside the bits that spoke against Bergwall’s own version of events. The media also played an important part in the massive hoodwink, because reporters took all the “official” truths for granted. Few were the journalists who questioned the “perfect story.”
An important question is who will pay, if at all, for allowing this to happen?
Sweden’s Justice Minister Beatrice Ask has appointed “The Quick Commission”, headed by political science professor Daniel Tarschys. He is a former member of the Riksdag and a professor of political science – he is thus not a lawyer. This could mean that that case is investigated from a political and not a legal point of view. It is unlikely that the commission will yield true power to change any structural weakness it finds to lay behind the many ill-made decisions that saw Bergwall wrongfully convicted of eight murders.
David Lindén is a PhD student in history at King’s College London and is currently a liberal political commentator for Borås Tidning (BT). Previously he was a visiting scholar at University of North Carolina. Follow him on Twitter here.
Posted in Uncategorized
Russell Covey has posted the above-titled article on SSRN. Download copy here.
The abstract states:
This study gathers data from two mass exonerations resulting from major police scandals, one involving the Rampart division of the L.A.P.D., and the other occurring in Tulia, Texas. To date, these cases have received little systematic attention by wrongful convictions scholars. Study of these cases, however, reveals important differences among subgroups of wrongful convictions. Whereas eyewitness misidentification, faulty forensic evidence, jailhouse informants, and false confessions have been identified as the main contributing factors leading to many wrongful convictions, the Rampart and Tulia exonerees were wrongfully convicted almost exclusively as a result of police perjury. In addition, unlike other exonerated persons, actually innocent individuals charged as a result of police wrongdoing in Rampart or Tulia only rarely contested their guilt at trial. As is the case in the justice system generally, the great majority pleaded guilty. Accordingly, these cases stand in sharp contrast to the conventional wrongful conviction story. Study of these groups of wrongful convictions sheds new light on the mechanisms that lead to the conviction of actually innocent individuals.
Order Here
Wrongful Convictions Blog 